From 1600 to 1900, the ratio of men to women enslaved and exported in the African slave trade was roughly 181:100 – in other words, nearly two men were enslaved for every woman. It has long been theorized that this historical disparity continues to affect Africa’s cultural and political systems. In this article, the authors examine the impact of temporary gender imbalances caused by the slave trade on female political participation in modern African nation-states. They find that female political participation (measured using national voting records from 2011–2018) is higher in parts of Africa that lost a greater number of individuals to the slave trade, but only among non-patrilineal ethnic groups.

From 1600 to 1900, the ratio of men to women enslaved and exported in the African slave trade was roughly 181:100 – in other words, nearly two men were enslaved for every woman. It has long been theorized that this historical disparity continues to affect Africa’s cultural and political systems. In this article, the authors examine the impact of temporary gender imbalances caused by the slave trade on female political participation in modern African nation-states. They find that female political participation (measured using national voting records from 2011–2018) is higher in parts of Africa that lost a greater number of individuals to the slave trade, but only among non-patrilineal ethnic groups.

From 1600 to 1900, the ratio of men to women enslaved and exported in the African slave trade was roughly 181:100 – in other words, nearly two men were enslaved for every woman. It has long been theorized that this historical disparity continues to affect Africa’s cultural and political systems. In this article, the authors examine the impact of temporary gender imbalances caused by the slave trade on female political participation in modern African nation-states. They find that female political participation (measured using national voting records from 2011–2018) is higher in parts of Africa that lost a greater number of individuals to the slave trade, but only among non-patrilineal ethnic groups.

From 1600 to 1900, the ratio of men to women enslaved and exported in the African slave trade was roughly 181:100 – in other words, nearly two men were enslaved for every woman. It has long been theorized that this historical disparity continues to affect Africa’s cultural and political systems. In this article, the authors examine the impact of temporary gender imbalances caused by the slave trade on female political participation in modern African nation-states. They find that female political participation (measured using national voting records from 2011–2018) is higher in parts of Africa that lost a greater number of individuals to the slave trade, but only among non-patrilineal ethnic groups.

From 1600 to 1900, the ratio of men to women enslaved and exported in the African slave trade was roughly 181:100 – in other words, nearly two men were enslaved for every woman. It has long been theorized that this historical disparity continues to affect Africa’s cultural and political systems. In this article, the authors examine the impact of temporary gender imbalances caused by the slave trade on female political participation in modern African nation-states. They find that female political participation (measured using national voting records from 2011–2018) is higher in parts of Africa that lost a greater number of individuals to the slave trade, but only among non-patrilineal ethnic groups.

There is considerable variation both within and across societies in attitudes towards female employment outside of the household. In some societies, the dominant belief is that women should have equal opportunity to work outside the home, while in others women are strongly discouraged from working outside of the domestic sphere. Here the authors use pre-industrial ethnographic data and contemporary observations of gender inequality to test the hypothesis that cultural attitudes regarding the appropriateness of women working outside of the household are rooted in the ancestral adoption of plough cultivation. Contemporary measures of gender inequality assess variation across countries, ethnic groups, and individuals.

The study builds on a previous study with the Maasai suggesting that matrilineal descent will close that gap of competitive behavior between men and women. The author conducted a lab experiment consisting of 614 individuals representative of 27 ethnic groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. In the experiment, the participants completed a timed matching game. First, they played alone with the goal to complete 5 games within 5 minutes to win money. Next, they competed against an undisclosed opponent to complete the most games and to keep all of the winnings. Finally, the participants were able to choose which pay they preferred based solely on the results from the first round. This was designed to reflect competition preference and results indicated that women were less likely to engage in competition regardless of kinship system.

This article investigates commonly accepted theories that purport to explain political centralization and investigate their relevance to sub-Saharan Africa. The leading ideas for the formation of political centralization using a worldwide sample include population density, inter-state warfare, and trade. However, the authors reported these factors are not predictive of the sub-Saharan Africa sample. The authors suggest that the lack of agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa may have stunted population density therefore inhibiting political centralization and that Africa’s poor economic performance is, in part, due to lack of political centralization.

This article investigates commonly accepted theories that purport to explain political centralization and investigate their relevance to sub-Saharan Africa. The leading ideas for the formation of political centralization using a worldwide sample include population density, inter-state warfare, and trade. However, the authors reported these factors are not predictive of the sub-Saharan Africa sample. The authors suggest that the lack of agricultural productivity in sub-Saharan Africa may have stunted population density therefore inhibiting political centralization and that Africa’s poor economic performance is, in part, due to lack of political centralization.

The goal of the paper is to demonstrate how international slave trade spread the institution of slavery throughout Africa, resulting in long-term effects of the continent’s income and political centralization. The author first estimated the travel time to slave ports from each society in the Ethnographic Atlas to determine predicting factors for the adoption of slave trade in African societies. The author reported that societies with high exposure to slave capture in the past were more likely to have the custom of slavery and the custom of polygyny. The author further suggested that slavery institutions emerged in West Africa through local, politically centralized aristocratic systems while emerging in East Africa through the preservation of wealth within the nuclear family over generations.